


Querencia

by sparrow2000



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-27
Updated: 2014-12-27
Packaged: 2018-03-03 20:43:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2886884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparrow2000/pseuds/sparrow2000
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Home truths hurt - it doesn’t matter if you’re the one telling or the one receiving...  This is my 'what if' for the last scene of 'As You Were'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Querencia

**Author's Note:**

> Written for 2014 noel_of_spike  
> Warnings: a little bit of bitter harsh  
> Disclaimer: Joss and Mutant Enemy et al own everything. I own nothing  
> Beta extraordinaire as always: thismaz  
> Comments are cuddled and called George

“Every Slayer has a death wish”

“I don’t have a death wish.” Her lips sound out the words, but her eyes tell a different story.

“Is that right?” I pull a packet of fags out of my pocket and she flinches at the movement. “That’s why you patrol every night? Why you wander around in the dark, looking for beasties to kill?” The flame from the Zippo dances in the chill breeze oozing in from the door of the crypt. Her eyes track the movement.

“I’m the Slayer, it’s kind of what I do,” she says. She doesn’t look at me.

I shake my head. “It’s not what you do. It’s who you are.” She wants to deny it, but I keep on going. “You think you’re the Bit’s big sis, and Red’s best friend, and Harris’ goddess on a pedestal, and you’re all those things. To them. But you know the truth and so do I. That’s the reason you come to me and not the witch, or the boy. The reason why you don’t get the old man of the phone. Because we both know that what they see isn’t who you really are. Strip away the blondeness and the California slang, and you’re the Slayer. Pure. Simple. Distilled.”

“I’m not listening to this.” She shifts slowly, a quarter rotation, until she can see both me and the door. She’s not going anywhere.

“Of course you’re not.” I take a long drag on my fag. It’s kind of interesting, waiting to see if she has a comeback. She doesn’t. “Why would you listen to old Spike? Why did you ask me once how I killed two Slayers? Why do you come here, night after night, looking for a fight and a fuck? Looking for things you can’t get anywhere else.”

“I hate you.” Her arms are wrapped round her middle. I can see the curve of her breasts through her blouse.

“I don’t care. Still need me.” My fingers itch to reach out and touch her skin and I clamp down hard on the end of the cigarette. “You’re more comfortable with the dead than the living. You spend half your night in bone-yards killing things and the rest of the time with me. I’m just another corpse, love, but I’ve got more life in me than you’ll ever have.”

She heads for the door, then pauses, looking back. She always wants the last word. “I’m not coming here again. Not anymore. I’ve never wanted you. I don’t want the kind of answers you can give me.

“You don’t want them, that’s true. Doesn’t mean you don’t need them. That’s a different thing. You’ll be back.”

“Keep telling yourself that.” She hunches, her shoulders somewhere up around her ears. She doesn’t look like she could kill a fly.

I take a step forward. I can hear her breathing. “You know, love, in bull fighting there’s a word – ‘querencia’. It’s the place where the bull goes back to, time and again. Where it defends. The longer the fight, the more the bull feels threatened, the more it returns to that spot. Its comfort zone. It stops trying anything new. Just keeps going back, and back, and back. It gets predictable. It gets dead.”

“Lucky I’m not a bull, then.” Her head’s up now and her back’s straight, but there’s a tremor in her edge of her voice. I know she can hear it too.

I take another step forward and her breath hitches. “Yeah, you think you’re the matador, with the fancy cape, playing to the crowd. Only your crowd is what you’re killing. All the creepy crawlies out there on the Hellmouth, they’re your audience. That’s why you’ve got a death wish, just like every Slayer before you,” I reach out, fingers just hovering over the pulse in her neck. I can see it beating. “When you feel safer in the dark, it’s only a matter of time.”

“Don’t touch me.”

“See, there’s no grand moment. No big wave of emotion, telling you it’s time. It’s just the bull returning to its spot once too often. Then it’s done. And so are you.”

I turn and walk away. Count to ten. She’s gone when I hit nine, but her perfume hangs in the air. I breathe it in.

She’ll be back.

Because this is her comfort zone.

Because every Slayer has a death wish.


End file.
